Celts set their sights on Toronto

Thursday

BOSTON — The prevailing opinion around the NBA is that the road to the Eastern Conference Finals this season goes through Boston.

The Celtics have a chance Friday night to begin making sure that road does not actually go through Toronto.

Before the Raptors performed their annual postseason flameout against LeBron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers last season, that’s exactly the way the path was set up, as it was Toronto that had the best record in the conference at 59-23. With James now out West with the Los Angeles Lakers, and the Celtics bringing back a healthy Gordon Hayward and Kyrie Irving to bolster a squad that led in the fourth quarter of Game 7 of the Eastern Conference finals, the predominant take is that Boston has leapfrogged the Raptors in the conference hierarchy.

But Celtics coach Brad Stevens tried to pump the breaks on that narrative in preseason when he repeatedly noted the Celtics were the second-best team in the East in both the regular season and postseason last year. And while Boston gets a major boost with the return of two All-Stars, the Raptors look to have improved as well with the addition of one of the best players in the NBA when healthy.

Kawhi Leonard — acquired from the San Antonio Spurs, along with Danny Green, in a deal for All-Star guard DeMar DeRozan — scored 24 points with 13 rebounds in 37 minutes of Wednesday’s 116-104 victory over the Cleveland Cavaliers. While the Celtics made the Philadelphia 76ers, once again, look more like pretenders than contenders in their 105-87 opening-night win, the Raptors are next Friday night in Toronto as the team that is much more likely to be Boston’s primary challenger in the East.

“Definitely, a very hard place [to win],” Celtics guard Terry Rozier said of Toronto, which was tied with Houston as an NBA-best 34-7 at home last season. “But we’ve got to go up there and treat it like any other game. We’ve got to prepare. And I think our coaches do a great job of getting us ready. We’re coming in with a great mindset to win.”

The game is part of an opening week in which the Celtics face three Atlantic Division rivals in five days, with the second half of a back-to-back upcoming in New York against the Knicks on Saturday night. Yet, while Boston can create some early standings separation with a three-game win streak, they are not necessarily looking at it as a chance to make a particular statement.

“I feel like every week is,” Rozier said. “We’ve still got a bad taste in our mouths — I know I do — coming up short [of the East title] last year. So we’ve got to make a statement every week.”

Toronto finished four games ahead of Boston in the regular season last year, while the teams split their four meetings.

“They played us tough,” Celtics center Aron Baynes said. “We didn’t play well against them last season.

“But one of the things that we have to have is an internal focus. That’s our key this year. We really have to see what we need to do as a team to improve each game — and focus on that first and foremost.”

Bayes agreed with Rozier that the game plan is key to the Celtics using their remarkable versatility to their strength against the Raptors.

“We have to know personnel,” Baynes said, “which Brad does a great job of getting everyone to understand. When we do that, and we focus on ourselves, it’s about improving every single night we step out there.”

That preparation for the weekend extends beyond the scouting report, with Stevens saying last week that the team went long in workouts in consecutive days to help prepare it for the first back-to-back of the year.

“We’re going to get into New York really late [early Saturday morning],” the coach said. “Everybody has games like that and you have to perform. So you prepare in these preseason practices for those situations — even if they are back-to-back noon practices.”

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